Alrighty ladies and gentlemen following Celebrity Apprentice 2, it’s time for a new edition of Trump’s World of Celebrity Fundraising and Humiliation. I’m sure that by this point in the process each one of the celebtestants have speed-dialed their agents a hundred times, trying to figure out why the hell they are there. And I have a sneaking suspicion that at least one of them will intentionally bail in this episode or develop an important commitment elsewhere for the next several weeks.

Keeping your identity safe with the help of famous people.

After Tionne and Khloe were fired at the end of the previous boardroom session, the folks back in suite were fairly put out. No one thinks it is fair that Khloe got the boot for something she did off of the show and was making reparations for. Meanwhile, Joan is just pissed off to no end that Clint is still around. Plus, Annie can’t resist pointing out that Clint’s video sucked big-time...which it did.

The next morning, Trump meets the remaining celebs on the steps of a court building and assigns the now-returned Brian to Athena. He asks if any of them have problems with the last boardroom and Joan speaks up about Khloe’s firing. Trump says he hates drunk drivers and wanted to make an example of her.

After that “chit chat,” Trump says that identity theft is the fastest growing crime and introduces Todd and Andrew of Lifelock. They’re so paranoid about their real identities, they neglect to give their last names. The teams will have to come up with a retail store display and a take-away package to sign up for the service. Todd says a bunch of stuff that was obviously scripted about brand messaging and packaging, but I tune out due to the dullness. The teams pick PMs—Natalie for Kotu and Brian for Athena—which allows Annie to dodge PM status once again. The winner will get $20,000 for his or her charity of choice.

Both teams meet with the Lifelock executives. Annie dominates Athena’s meeting, asking what words the execs want to describe their product and whether their campaign is positive or fear-based. When Kotu meets with the executives, Joan wants to know if they can use humor and Clint wants to know if he’ll get a free membership. Joan calls Clint self-centered, but professes to be used to his attitude by now.

Kotu meets to discuss the theme of their stand up display. Joan suggests a bodyguard but Clint suggests a safe and the rest of the team goes with that. Ivanka stops by to see how Kotu is doing early on and notes Natalie has a tough job as PM—essentially she’ll have to be the peacekeeper amongst some rather unfriendly fire between Joan and Clint. Natalie puts Herschel and Clint in charge of the display and Joan in charge of the packaging, wisely breaking up the Joan/Clint rivalry.

Team Athena decides to use Lifelock exec Todd as the face of the advertising, as he has been the brand spokesman since the start. Brian assigns Jesse to design the display and the graphic designers arrive. Jesse and Brande head out to Brooklyn to the display fabricator’s workshop to get started on the stand-up display, but not before stopping to take pictures of every pad lock in the tri-state area. Brande notes she’s playing it cool, just hanging back doing what she’s told to do and nothing more. Back in the Athena war room, Annie works on the verbiage for the display and thinks things are relaxed, as they’re head of schedule. She works on the slogan while Melissa brushes her hair.

For Kotu, Clint and Herschel are in charge of the display so they also head to Brooklyn to the fabricators, but actually arrive. The graphic designers are making the stickers to go on the stand-up, so the guys only have to oversee the construction. However, the fabricators assigned to Athena have nothing to do—they’ve been waiting around for three and a half hours with no direction. Brande and Jesse haven’t arrived yet and in Athena’s war room, Annie wonders about the art constructors. Brian admits he hasn’t called them so she does, and finds out the deadline is fast approaching. She then calls Jesse and Brande and gets them to high tail it over there. Melissa just thinks Annie is covering her ass, but, in truth, she’s probably jealous she didn’t think of the problem first. On the way to the art work shop, Jesse gets pukingly sick but toughs it out because he doesn’t like hearing people are sick as an excuse. He hangs back and lets the guys do their work, while Brande makes a fool of herself wondering what kind of nature denatured alcohol lost and saying that she’s good at screwing nails in. Seriously, I get that it’s kind of pervy, but you don’t screw nails. You just don’t.

Clint and Herschel are also at the same art fabricators to oversee the display construction. Joan and Natalie head out to look for stuff to put on their display and Joan gets the idea of using their faces on the display. Natalie thinks it’s a great idea to use their celebrity on the display. They call Clint and Herschel and tell them that the physical specs don’t need to change, only the graphic. Clint gets wiggy about it, and Herschel has to get the phone away from him to get things sorted out with Joan and Natalie. Herschel pretty much tells Clint to stop being a big baby and phone hog, then they both work out with the graphic designer what the stickers on the display will do. While Clint worries they will have a time crunch, back in the war room, Natalie ponders how to fold the paper for the brochure, which causes Joan to comment that Natalie is merely an average leader. Apparently Natalie’s less-than-strong leadership skills have forced Joan to reevaluate her working relationship with Clint; she figured that if they want a chance in hell at winning, she’d have to suck it up and deal with him. Natalie then concludes they’ve done all they need to do and it’s time to pack it in for the day. Uh-oh! Leaving early is never a good thing on this show! Could this be foreshadowing? Probably not, as the editors aren’t that clever.

Team Athena isn’t having that easy of a time either, aside from Jesse’s puking. The CD of the design Brande brought with her is blank, so she calls Brian to e-mail the files to her. Back in the Athena war room, Annie knows they are running out of time to complete the task, but Melissa thinks they should just chill out and get over-prepared on the facts and figures. The ever so insightful George turns up, gets a handle on what Athena is doing, and says they look awfully calm and what he’s seen isn’t all that creative. After George departs, the folks in the war room hear that the email didn’t come through, so with only a few minutes left, the files are sent directly to the printer’s email address. Annie is still freaking out that Brian should have been more aware of the deadline and thinks Brande was useless at the printer; Melissa concurs, saying that Brande is not proactive at problem solving. Meanwhile, Brian heads to Brooklyn to the printer and Jesse thinks everything will be okay, even though he’s still puking his guts out.

The next day brings the presentations for the executives. Kotu has a bit of drama in that the sticker they had made with their four faces and “funny” sayings about identity theft is just too small. They make an emergency call to the printer and a new, bigger sticker arrives and the day is saved. Their presentation goes pretty well—each team member comes out saying, “I’m Joan Rivers” until the real Joan appears and then she talks about identity theft. They had fabricated a little box with the whole kit to sign up for the identity theft protection product and the executives liked the presentation. Brian then does the presentation for Athena; he does a nice job of it and the execs are seemingly impressed as well. It was heavier on the facts and figures than on the entertainment, but the stand-up display has information for the consumer to take home with them. It looks like it might be a close call, so it’s off to the board room!

As in life, it’s all about the quality of the package.

This week the infamous pink tie was on holiday, so Trump shows up in its cousin, Golden Boy—the shiny yellow tie of courage (not cowardice—Trump would have my head if I suggested as much). He asks Natalie how her team did and she, of course, says that her team worked well together but she also doesn’t want to jinx them by saying she thought they won. Joan and Clint profess a new-found respect for one another, saying they got along famously during the task. When asked how Natalie did as PM, Joan gives her a 7 or 8.

As for Athena, Brian also says his team did a great job. Melissa explains that Jesse was sick and throwing up constantly, but he still stuck around. Trump, whom I suspect is a strong germophobe, asked Jesse where he got this plague, and Jesse admits it was from his daughter. Trump breaths a sigh of relief, as he won’t be trolling around school yards looking for a new wife for at least a couple of years.

Finally, after all this chit-chat, we get some results. Ivanka says that Kotu scored well on having an original idea and made a great use of their celebrity, but came up short on the display in that it couldn’t house the great packaging they’d made for the executives. As for Athena, George said their presentation was great and the display hit the message, but it wasn’t that creative. The executives did like that the product was for sale on the display.

Kotu is then announced as the winner because of the packaging and the use of celebrity. Natalie get $20,000 for The Boys and Girls Club of America. They’re dismissed back up to the suite to watch who will be fired. Joan is positive her daughter will be safe and Annie with see to it that Brande is out, based on a conversation she had with Annie the night before at dinner.

In the board room, Brian defends their creative choices by saying that he got the impression from Todd, the Lifelock guy, that he didn’t want them going too far outside of what the company’s message already was and that Todd liked being the face of his product. Jesse comments that it all just came down to better packaging in the end. George says that it looked like they had a problem with timing, and Annie concurs saying that any time she raised the deadline issue, Brian told her there was no problem to worry about. She goes on to say that Brian’s a great guy but he was weak in the management abilities. George then attacks Melissa for wasting time on research, but she tries to divert the criticism by saying she was waiting around for stuff from Annie so she didn’t want to do nothing.

Trump then asks the standard, “Who should I fire?” question; Brande and Jesse both say Brian because he was the PM but Melissa says Brande because she is not a proactive worker. Brande says she did all the work she was told to do and worked on the display case, which the executives liked. Annie takes Melissa’s cue and piles on Brande, saying that while Brande does work hard, she does not play to win nor stick her neck out. Ivanka, ever the shrewd one, notes that Annie has yet to stick her neck out and be PM, despite always being very loud in her opinions.

Brian is so over this whole mess, he says that if it’s his fault they lost, then it’s his fault. He picks Brande and Melissa to come back in the board room, which causes Joan to have a fit and break her champagne glass. She packs up her bag and decides to sit by the door because if Melissa is out, so is she. Joan is super-pissed that Annie didn’t make more of a fuss about how lousy Brande is. Given how abrasive Melissa is on my last nerve, I’ll take the non-proactive Brande for a few more weeks.

Brian, Brande and Melissa head back in the board room. Brian isn’t surprised to be there, given the time constraints they had on their presentation and that they didn’t get the concept quite right. Melissa blames Annie for dominating the process, which is just stupid, since Annie isn’t in the room. Brian wouldn’t fire either Melissa or Brande, and Brande comments that it looks like Brian has already checked out. He pretty much confirms that by saying that he’d rather be on tour than on this show, so Trump mercy-fires him. Obviously, Joan is thrilled that Melissa will stay on for another task.

Damn it, I thought we were done for the night.

Okay, actually I knew there were 50 more minutes to go, but I was hoping that NBC had suddenly changed its scheduling or something. Just as soon as Brian hit the street, Trump calls the teams back in to start their new challenge. Gaining some insight into why he’s so Joan/Melissa positive, Trump says that he’s going to make them throw a charity auction of Ivanka’s jewelry line. Good lord, can’t anyone get ahead in the world without nepotism any more? It’s going to be a fund-raiser challenge so they need to break out their Rolodexes. Annie steps up finally to be PM on Athena and Joan, though at first recommending Herschel, takes the job of PM of Kotu. Joan relishes the thought of beating “two-faced” Annie.

The teams get right to work. Annie puts Jesse on designing the brochures, Melissa will pick out the jewelry pieces for auction, and Brande will chose the clothes and the models. Of course, Melissa thinks she should pick the clothes to go with the jewelry and Brande shouldn’t; meanwhile Brande gets on the phone and cuts a first-look deal with the modeling agency. Since Brande has shown some value, Annie is being nice to her, which chaps Melissa’s hide to no end.

On Team Kotu, Joan gets Natalie to pick out the jewelry, but not before she can make an offensive comment about women golfers’ sexuality. Someone remind me that if I ever see Joan, her plastic face will come in direct contact with my three iron (as it’s an old-school club, much heavier than my driver, and actually has a chance of penetrating the layers of surgery). Clint is going to be the auctioneer, and Annie sets about calling donors. Jesse says that he kinda/sorta wants to help out but he doesn’t want to spend all his donors on someone else’s task and would rather the money go to his charity. Somehow I think that’s going to get back to The Hair. Then Clint and Herschel get the bright idea of pooling their donor money to buy the cheapest thing on the auction block to show the most profits.

Natalie and Melissa head off to Ivanka’s jewelry show room to pick out the pieces for their respective auctions. Natalie chooses the simpler, more elegant pieces while Melissa goes for big pieces that will look good from the stage. Natalie pretty much sticks with what she likes, while the ever self-aggrandizing Melissa says that of course she liked the simpler pieces for herself, but she wanted to pick the flashier ones for the auction. Oh honey, we all know you’re tacky as anything; give it up. When they return to their teams, Athena couldn’t give a rat’s ass about what Melissa picked, while Joan was very disappointed in Natalie’s picks. Hey, Joan—you’re the QVC jewelry queen, why didn’t you handle the selection?

Although Team Athena didn’t care about the jewelry selection, they do—at least some of them—care about the donors they can line up. Annie and Brande work the phones, calling as many contacts as they can. They say they have to pick up the slack for Melissa and Jesse, who aren’t making that much of an effort to bring in the cash. Of course, Melissa sees Annie’s work with Brande to be some kind of Lord of the Flies redux, but it seems to me that it’s really all about the Benjamins.

Not to suggest that Team Kotu isn’t also concerned with their donors. Clint has a 20 to 30K commitment and Herschel has about a 45K pledge. Joan starts calling people and Natalie gets the tricky idea of finding out who Annie’s poker world rivals are. She wants to track down those folks and get them to help defeat Annie. She eventually gets in touch with Phil Hellmuth, whom I only know as the second Phil from Celebrity Poker Showdown. But then, I pretty much learned most of what I know from Bravo anyway.

And that’s exactly why I desperately wanted Tim Gunn to come in and help with the model and clothes choosing. Melissa and Brande auditioned the models for Athena, made them walk, and made them all pretend they were wearing a bracelet. It is also decided that Brande will model the piece for which she’s secured a buyer; Brande’s modeling drives Melissa battier than usual, causing her to comment how Brande’s ego couldn’t take it if she didn’t model the piece. More like it, Melissa’s ego couldn’t handle the fact she wasn’t asked to model crap. Over on Team Kotu, Clint and Herschel had no clue what they were doing and just chatted the girls up in a rather uncomfortable way.

The clothing shopping was no less awkward. Natalie and Joan shopped for clothes for Kotu, which translated into Joan picking out all the clothes. Melissa and Brande went shopping for Athena, but Brande—according to Melissa—got too wrapped up in figuring out what she was going to wear. Of course, Melissa “saved the day” by picking the other three outfits.

While there’s a bit more quibbling on Athena about who is brining in the donors, the real drama goes on back in Trump’s office. It seems he’s found a secret agent to go check up on the teams’ auctions in no one other than Piers Morgan, the winner of CA1. Trump warns Piers that Annie and Joan hate each other, Melissa is bratty, and Jesse hasn’t brought in any money. Piers says he’s up for the job because there’s only been one Celebrity Apprentice, and that’s him. Good god, man, this isn’t The Highlander!

Tune in next week when jewelry will be auctioned, Piers will make his appearance, and Iguanachocolate will be bringing you all the lovely recappage.

After that “chit chat,” Trump says that identity theft is the fastest growing crime and introduces Todd and Andrew of Lifelock. They’re so paranoid about their real identities, they neglect to give their last names.
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Back in the Athena war room, Annie works on the verbiage for the display and thinks things are relaxed, as they’re head of schedule. She works on the slogan while Melissa brushes her hair.
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...Brande makes a fool of herself wondering what kind of nature denatured alcohol lost and saying that she’s good at screwing nails in. Seriously, I get that it’s kind of pervy, but you don’t screw nails. You just don’t.
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Trump, whom I suspect is a strong germophobe, asked Jesse where he got this plague, and Jesse admits it was from his daughter. Trump breaths a sigh of relief, as he won’t be trolling around school yards looking for a new wife for at least a couple of years.